27 October 2014

Last night was a bit of first for me - the first time I've walked out on the headline act at a gig... :-(

Alatyr getting our evening off to a cracking start at The Fleece

We went to see Haken last night at The Fleece and kudos to the band, not only did they have Maschine and Leprous as support but also three local bands opening ahead of them. This meant an early start to the night and unfortunately we missed the first two but caught the end of the set by Alatyr, a Bristol based melodic metal band who, mixing female vocals and cookie monster sounds were pretty good.

Maschine - hello and goodbye!

I wasn't sure what I was going to make of Maschine, I wasn't as wowed by their debut album as everyone else seemed to be and they didn't get off to a great start with a major keyboard malfunction resulting in the loss of over half their allowed set time. When they did start (with a witty "Hello Bristol, this is our last song") I must say they were very, very good and what a shame it was that we only got about 15 minutes of them.

Leprous at The Fleece - stunning!

Norwegian Prog Metal band Leprous came next and were not one I was overly familiar with before last night. I think bloody amazing sums them up. I wasn't sure what t expect as Scandinavian prog metal bands are ten a dozen, but they were superb, and I had to pick their latest album Coal up off the march stand. Check them out, they are just going to get bigger...

Haken 0 Sound Engineer 1

And then there was Haken. I loved their debut album and was really looking forward to seeing them as everyone tells me they are a superb live band but they sound awful. I guess it was the sound engineer's fault but it was just a wall of distorted noise and even Cockroach King sounded meh. I have no explanation why they sounded so awful when the previous two bands didn't but... So after four tracks I headed home to play Coal.